The puzzle would be finished soon. Her time to figure out what she wanted was running out.
He had a decision to make—a decision that had nothing to do with Second Chances. It was about time he made it.
“Can I talk to you?” he asked Yvonne, plopping into the wicker chair opposite her on the south side of the porch.
Yvonne set down the script she’d been reading and adjusted her sunglasses to look down her nose at him. “Where’s your sweet Tasha?”
“Upstairs. We finished the puzzle, so she went to take a nap before dinner.”
“Oh.” Yvonne smiled, removing her sunglasses and folding them on top of the script, now in her lap. “What can I help you with, honey?”
“Second Chances.”
He could have just offered her a mansion in Barbados with her choice of cabana boys and her eyes wouldn’t have glowed more. “Yes?” Her voice practically quivered in anticipation.
“Have they decided on locations for remote filming yet?”
Yvonne’s joy deflated a bit. The sparkle in her eyes turned to business. “Last I heard, they were scouting a few places in New England. It’s supposedly set in rural Vermont, you know.”
He nodded. That was one of the reasons he hadn’t written the idea off entirely.
“Are there any front-runners?” he asked with deadly seriousness.
“They’re exploring an option in Vermont, one in New Hampshire. There’s even a spot in Maine, close to here, believe it or not. A retirement home called Twin Pines that’s looking to make money by renting space to Hollywood.”
Spence’s brow flew up. “Near here?”
“Yes.” The sparkle drifted back into her eyes as she caught on to his line of questions. “Only half an hour away, or so. That’s the nice thing about Maine. You’ve got mountains and you’ve got oceans, all within a day’s drive.”
“How likely are they to choose the Maine location?”
Yvonne shifted forward. “How likely are you to agree to the part if they choose to shoot in Maine?”
Yep. She had his number. “Very,” he answered.
“I see.” Her lips twitched, but he knew her well enough to know that she hadn’t reached the point of declaring victory yet. “You know your sweetie lives in Portland, not in Summerbury, don’t you?”
He shrugged, choosing to play it cool, even though he felt like his mom was grilling him about his prom date. “We’re not that far from Portland here. Plus, Tasha loves this place. Didn’t you say the owners are thinking of selling so they can retire.”
“Did I say that?” Yvonne leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs, cagy as ever.
“You did. And I’m saying this. If the producers agree to use the Maine location to film, then I’ll agree to do the part.”
“All this for a woman?” she pressed him.
“She’s not just any woman,” Spence said.
“Actually, sweetheart, she is just any woman. She won’t do a thing for your image.”
He tried not to grip the arms of his chair hard enough to crush them. It wasn’t easy. “I disagree with you. She’s beautiful and intelligent, and even though you might not like it, marrying a regular woman would be fantastic for my image.”
“Marrying her?” Yvonne’s eyes flew so wide he thought they might pop out of her head. “Oh, honey, you don’t want to go there.”
“You’re wrong,” he said. “I love Tasha, and I want to marry her.”
“After five weeks?”
“Nearly six.”
Yvonne huffed. “That’s not much of a difference. And I don’t care who you are, it’s not enough time to know whether someone is worth marrying.”
“I disagree.” Firmly. Stubbornly. Bullishly. “Sometimes that’s all it takes.”
She shook her head.
“I’ve never met anyone like Tasha in my life. She’s the one for me, Yvonne, I know it. I’ve never been more sure of anything.”
“And what does Tasha think of all this?” She picked up her sunglasses and started tapping them against the arm of the chair.
The satisfaction of having really annoyed Yvonne was squelched by the truth behind the answer to her question. “I haven’t talked to her about it yet.”
Yvonne stopped tapping. She let out a breath. “Don’t you think you might want to do that before you start hiring caterers and booking the honeymoon?”
“I’m sure she loves me,” he told her. “We’re just so right together, so natural.”
“Has she said anything about marriage?”
“No. We’ve just been enjoying the summer so far.”
“Uh-huh. And are you sure it’s not just a fling for her?”
“A fling?” Now he was the one who was annoyed.
“You know. A hot summer romance with a superstar? You have to admit, it’s quite a fantasy.”
He refused to be suckered by Yvonne’s below-the-belt tactics. “Tasha is not the kind of girl who would have a casual fling.”
“Honey, every girl is the kind who would have a casual fling if a man like you walked into their life and stripped down.”
“You’re wrong,” he insisted, standing so that his frustration wouldn’t cause the chair to spontaneously combust. “You’re wrong and I’ll prove you wrong.”
“All right,” she sighed. “If you think this is going down the aisle, then go talk to her about it.”
“I will,” he insisted. In spite of the fact that his gut clenched at the thought.
He turned to storm off the porch and into the house. Yvonne was jaded. She’s spent too long in Hollywood. She didn’t know Tasha the way he did.
He did know her. They’d shared so much in the last few weeks. He hadn’t been lying when he told Yvonne that for some people, all it took was a few weeks to know that you wanted to spend the rest of your life with them.
He took the stairs up to the second floor two at a time. Of course, it was obvious to him now. That thing he’d been missing from his life for so long, that need he hadn’t been able to fulfill, was for love. Honest, ordinary love. He’d found that with Tasha. She was the rock that would keep him honest, the home that would keep him balanced in a crazy world. He needed her.
“Hey, Tash, you awake?” he murmured as he snuck into the bedroom they’d been sharing for the past four weeks.
Tasha stirred. She was sleeping on her side, facing the window, but at the sound of his voice, she hummed and shifted onto her back. Her eyes were heavy-lidded, almost closed. She’d taken off her bra, and her nipples poked against her thin, cotton t-shirt. Her legs rubbed against each other as she stretched awake. He was hard in an instant.
“Hey,” he said again, low and seductive. Tell her you love her, his conscience urged. Tell her you want to marry her. His body had other ideas. He tugged his shirt up over his head and took off his shorts. “Is there room for two on that bed?”
She let out a lazy laugh as he crawled onto the quilt and stretched over top of her. His cock ached to be inside of her, so he ground his hips against hers, sucking in a breath at the friction of her shorts. It was a cop-out, sure, but a damn good one. There was something supremely erotic about her being fully clothed while he was naked, like he was hers to command.
He liked the images that brought to his mind and ran with them. “What do you want?” he growled. “Tell me what you want, and I’ll do it.”
She answered with a breathless moan, wrapping her arms around him. “We shouldn’t.” Her voice was still thick with sleep.
“Oh yes, we should.”
He braced his arms on either side of her shoulders and kissed her. Her lips were soft and giving. Her mouth opened for him on a sigh, and he delved inside, kissing her with his soul. Her fingertips pressed into his back, sending a jolt through his groin. She made him hotter than any woman ever had in a fraction of the time. He wanted to call her his forever. Say something, his mind urged. Instead, he explored her mouth with his tongue the way he wanted to stroke inside of
her with his cock.
“Spence,” she sighed.
“Tasha,” he answered.
He leaned his weight on one arm and reached down to rake his fingertips up across her belly to her breast. She gasped in response, and shivered. He would never get enough of her reactions to his touch. She was so responsive. He had a lifetime to make her gasp and tremble and more.
He pulled her t-shirt up high enough to expose her breast, then bent down to suckle her, tongue circling her nipple, raking it to a tight knot, then he sucked hard. She let out a helpless sigh, her legs moving under him. That sign that she wanted him was so powerful that he pressed his erection hard against the juncture of her thighs. He licked her nipple a few more times, then lifted his head to blow on it.
She gasped aloud, shaking with pleasure.
“Is that what you want?” he asked.
She hummed and nodded, wriggling beneath him. She was irresistible. He pushed her t-shirt up higher, to expose her other breast, but before he could close his mouth around that nipple, she shifted, squirming all the way out of her shirt and tossing it aside.
That was all the invitation he needed. He spread his hands along her sides, teasing her breasts with his fingertips before raking down to her hips so he could unbutton her shorts. She hummed with sweet, sleepy sounds as he unzipped her fly, then planted kiss after kiss down her belly, across her abdomen, and to the flesh that he’d exposed. She arched her hips against him.
The urgent need to be inside of her battled with wanting to give her as much pleasure as possible. He inched back, pulling her shorts and panties down her legs and working them off over her feet. His cock ached with an energy that drove him crazy as it strained up against his abdomen. It knew what it wanted, just as he knew what he wanted. Tasha, this beautiful, amazing woman in front of him, in his life forever.
He hopped off the bed and lunged toward the bureau to grab a condom. As he rolled it on, he imagined how good it would feel to slide inside of her without one. Once things were settled between them, once she was his, nothing would come between them. They could have kids, lots of kids.
That thought propelled him back to the bed. He stretched against her, reveling in the brush of her skin against his, her heat melding with his. That was all he wanted, this heady closeness to her. His mouth sought hers, his hands reached for her breasts. He kissed her, stroked her, rubbed against her, the need to pleasure her as pulsing as his need to find release.
“I love you,” he whispered against her ear, flicking her tongue across her lobe. “God, Tasha, I love you.”
She gasped and arched into him. “Spence.”
The urgency in her voice was too much for him. She was too much for him, and yet there she was, in his arms. He stroked his fingers across the plain of her stomach and down until he found her center, hot, wet, and waiting for him. A sigh of pleasure escaped from her as he circled her clit with his thumb, light strokes that had her gasping for breath. She was brilliant in a classroom, but she was fire and life like this, with him.
He couldn’t hold back. He guided himself to her entrance, then plunged in with the power of his passion. “I love you,” he groaned as he found an urgent rhythm. “So much.”
She tensed around him. The sensation pushed him close to the edge far too soon. He focused his will and thrust into her with slow, even strokes. She cried out with each one, louder and harder as he upped his intensity. He nuzzled her neck as he worked in and out of her, tasting the salt of her skin, breathing in the warmth of her. He would give up everything for her, change the world for her if he had to. She was everything he’d ever wanted and more.
When he felt the first shock of her orgasm squeezing around him, he lost control. As desperately as he wanted to hold still and feel her come, he jerked with the need to fill her, to spill himself inside of her. He came with a hot jolt that he felt from his spine through his groin and into her. It was so good that he cried out, lost in pleasure. She was his, his with his whole heart. He loved her and would do anything, anything to make her life as happy as it could be.
Chapter Seventeen
She loved him. She loved him, and it was the biggest mistake of her life. What the hell had she been thinking, letting him seduce her after her nap like that? If there was a Queen of Mistakes, it would have been her. As soon as Spence had drifted off to sleep after sending her to heaven and back, Tasha rolled out of bed, guilt chewing her insides, and skipped off to the bathroom for a shower. How could she? She’d made her decision, and then she’d let that happen. Her heart was still pounding in her chest.
He’d told her he loved her. And, sure, men burst out declarations of love all the time as they were about to come, but Spence had meant it. She closed her eyes and held her head under the spray of warm water in the shower. He loved her. Spencer Ellis loved her. And she loved him. Her whole body ached with it. But they were two different people with very different lives. There was no way this could end well. The problem was, it had to end.
“You look like someone rained on your parade,” Yvonne said as Tasha passed her on her way out to the porch. She needed some air, and apparently Yvonne had had enough of it and was now stationed in the living room with a novel instead of a script.
“That’s a good one,” Tasha said, nodding to the novel. It was probably one of hers.
Yvonne slowly arched an eyebrow. It was enough to keep Tasha from heading straight outside. She switched directions and flopped onto the sofa, taking Spence’s script from the coffee table.
“Yes, I’ve always liked romantic novels.” Yvonne closed her book and set it aside, studying Tasha with narrowed eyes.
“You?” Tasha scoffed, eyes staying mostly on the script that she wasn’t really reading as she thumbed through the pages.
“I love a world where things always work out in the end and where true love wins. It’s so different from the world we live in.”
Tasha peeked up, only to find Yvonne leaning forward in her chair, either about to pounce or about to keep Tasha from pouncing. “Is something wrong?” she asked.
“Did you and Spence have a talk earlier?”
The question was so oddly direct that an itch passed down Tasha’s back. She rubbed her shoulders against the back of the sofa. “No. Not really. It wasn’t much of a talk.”
A spark of something Tasha couldn’t put her finger on lit Yvonne’s expression, and she leaned back in her chair, reaching for the book. “Interesting.”
Tasha frowned. “What’s so interesting?”
Yvonne shook her head with a quick, dismissive gesture. “Oh, nothing. Just a conversation Spence and I had earlier.”
Warning sirens rang through Tasha’s head. “You talked to him?”
“I’m his agent, honey, that’s what I do. More than his agent, because most agents wouldn’t devote so much time. I’m his friend.” She settled into her chair and crossed her legs like she’d won a major battle.
“What did you talk to him about?” Tasha pressed.
“His future, of course.”
“Oh.” She hadn’t expected the woman to be so ready with an answer. “Is he going to take the role in Second Chances?”
“Yes.” She smiled, but she didn’t offer elaboration.
“Good for him,” Tasha said, but she had to fight a pinching ache in her heart to do it.
That in itself was ridiculous. She shouldn’t be upset that Spence had taken the role. She wasn’t upset, exactly. It would be a good move for him. He would shine in the part. He would do that shining miles and miles away from her, but that’s what she wanted anyhow, right?
She huffed out a breath and tried to focus on the script. It was one she had already read, for a movie that Spence had complained was like every other movie people wanted him for these days. It wasn’t him. She tossed the script back onto the coffee table. It wasn’t her either. She’d made that decision. She wasn’t cut out to be a celebrity girlfriend.
“You seemed awfully excited about your c
lass list yesterday,” Yvonne said.
Tasha forced herself to meet Yvonne’s eyes with a smile. “Yes, I know some of the kids already. It’s a big school, but I recognize most of the names. I’m looking forward to the new school year.”
“Lovely. And when does that start?”
They’d already had this conversation. The question was about as innocent as Las Vegas.
“Soon,” she answered. Too soon. In just a couple of weeks, this entire frustrating, beautiful, hot, amazing summer would be gone, and Spence with it. Then she would be back to wondering how long it would take her heart to heal and whether anyone would ever look at her the way Spence—or, hell, even Brad—had. It would all be over.
“Do you love him?” Yvonne asked the question in such an odd, soft tone of voice that it snapped Tasha out of her gloomy spiral. Yvonne was back to studying her with those sharp eyes of hers too.
“What?” Tasha balked, flushing red and hot.
“You do, don’t you,” Yvonne said.
Was she that obvious?
Of course she was. She couldn’t hide what she was feeling any more than she could pretend that she was who she wasn’t.
She sighed. “Yes, I do love him. But what good does that do me? He’s going off to film this great TV series, probably down in New York or someplace like that, and I’ll be back in my classroom, doing what I do best.”
“I see.”
She probably did. Better than Tasha could.
“There’s that whole thing about a fish and a bird falling in love, right?” Tasha went on. “It’s pointless. Beautiful, but pointless.”
“Is it?”
Tasha pushed to her feet. She couldn’t handle this conversation anymore. It brought too many points home too hard. “You tell me,” she said, heading for the door to the porch.
Summer with a Star (Second Chances Book 1) Page 22